Wednesday, August 31, 2016

For some time now, Stormfront Lite's resident Labour 'moderate' Don Brind (he seems a decent enough chap in spite of the dodgy politics, so I won't call him a 'Blairite') has been trying to convince both the world and himself that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that Owen Smith could be heading for victory in the Labour leadership election. He's repeatedly prayed in aid highly dubious propaganda claims from "Saving Labour", and yesterday excelled himself by reading epic significance into the "fascinating" thought processes of an individual voter called Laura or Loz, who unexpectedly plumped for Smith because of something to do with her boyfriend.

That all looked like pretty risible stuff (Corbyn could still win handily even if there are 5000 Smith voters called Loz), but in truth there was no way of being completely sure - there had been so little polling done during the leadership campaign that it was just conceivable that Don Brind was right and everyone else was wrong. The last credible poll had been conducted way back when Angela Eagle was still a candidate and Owen Smith was a complete unknown, so it was theoretically possible that the Labour selectorate had indeed been won over by a man saying "that's not leeeee-dership, Jeremy" a hundred billion times.

But it appears not. A new YouGov poll has been released -

Jeremy Corbyn 62%Owen Smith 38%

YouGov themselves are putting all sorts of health warnings on those numbers, but the reality is that Corbyn is well ahead among all three segments of the selectorate with voting already underway. The polling methodology would have to be catastrophically wrong for there to be any genuine chance of Smith pulling off an upset.

Among many other potentially huge consequences, this means that the breach between London Labour and the Scottish branch office isn't going to be healed any time soon. Kezia Dugdale's display of rebelliousness (culminating in the grotesque appointment of the ex-political editor of the Scottish Daily Mail to her backroom staff) was probably initially intended as a gesture of fealty to what she assumed would shortly be the incoming London regime. Instead she seems to have crossed the Rubicon with an accidental declaration of independence.

59 comments:

Owen Smith was never much of an offering from the moderate wing of the party. Better people could have put themselves forward, but are waiting for their party to implode at the next election so the slate can be wiped clean. In the meantime, we will have a conservative government - and a tory landslide in 2020 (or whenever the next GE takes place). I think we can also expect a fair old chunk of Scotland to turn blue as well - on the political map, at least - if Holyrood 2016 is anything to go by.

Aldo, you're beginning to sound a bit like Jim Murphy in the days before the election. The U.K. Elections are just under 4 years away, and nobody can predict that far ahead. The Labour Party will continue to convulse for a while yet, but after the rebels sort themselves out into "leavers" and "remainers", the Labour Party could quite easily "do a SNP" and overcome the meeja with an army of enthused volunteers. If the SNP can do what they did with 100000, who's to say that half a million to a million Labour enthusiasts can't emulate them in 2020? I hope by then that Sturgeon will be putting the finishing touches to the independence settlement with rUK, and the deal with the EU. If you are going to be whimsical with your "fair old chunk....turning blue", I think I'm entitled to be slightly less whimsical with my much more likely scenario? :)Alex Birnie

Corbyn is a hard left dinosaur. He has as much chance of "doing a SNP" in England as the SNP has of being ousted by a party led by Iain Duncan Smith. They don't do socialism down there - too sensible.

You can also have half a million dedicated sheep but if the other 64.5 million aren't that keen then you're a bit stuck.

"finishing touches to the independence settlement" - what - like where all the soup kitchens are going to go? 15 billion pound deficit, oil at 47 dollars a barrel. There isn't going to be any independence.

Corbyn will win. Tories to stay in Westminster government for decades. Voting No in IndyRef2 will guarantee Scotland being dictated to by britnat Westminster tories for decades. Doubt if many soft No voters [in IndyRef1] will like decades of tory dictatorship from Westminster.

I have no idea what "Stormfront Lite" is.I wonder if I should care,as Corbyn or Smith mean very little to me,I'm an SNP man and have been since I was a boy(not always been a member moving around and forgetting to re-enlist)

Kezia Dugdale's display of rebelliousness (culminating in the grotesque appointment of the ex-political editor of the Scottish Daily Mail to her backroom staff) was probably initially intended as a gesture of fealty to what she assumed would shortly be the incoming London regime.

In fairness, she must've known Corbyn was likely to win when she declared for Smith, so it was an uncharacteristically bold move. I expected her to stay on the fence.

She backed the coup almost as soon as it started ("I wouldn't be able to carry on as leader if I lost the support of my MSPs"), so at that point she may well have thought it was going to succeed, ie. that Corbyn would dutifully throw in the towel under pressure. Having gone that far, she couldn't really pull herself back when it became obvious she'd made a misjudgement.

It could be the case that Corbyn wants to split the Labour Party. He knows moderate social democrats will never accept far left policies and the track record of himself. The Tories and their Tartan pals must be pissin themselves knowing they will be collecting their salaries for the next decade at least.

that is really the big what if: can Corbyn organize the troops to do a salmon/ sturgeon/ SNP movement. I bet lots of farage followers would rally to a nationalist labor message. Would also allow agreement with SNP as the average worker in England could care a rat's ass who the bloody Scots vote for.

Surely that is his campaign over now that brian spanner, I mean JK Plagiarist has spoken.

I see the revolting one is now claiming to have been so poor that she went without food to feed her daughter. Curious as said daughter had a comfortably wealthy father and upper-middle class grandfather on £50,000pa who could maybe have bought her a sandwich.

When ( I know, I know) will the Scottish media stop their JK Liar fixation and possibly report the truth about the disgusting hag?

I am pretty sure that many of the people who voted Brexit in England will also vote to elect Corbyn as PM.Working class people in England,in the main,have had enough of right wing governments who slavishly adhere to the voodoo economic cult espoused by Regan and Thatcher.There Is No Alternative,all the rest still cling to a failed political and economic dogma and Corbyn is the only one offering something different.An independent Scotland and an England led by Corbyn would have much to discuss in common.However,England has no recent history of electing left of centre governments so this is probably only wishful thinking.I wish him well.

Pretty sure Blair was considered left of center when first elected. Kinnock was portrayed as a fellow traveler who walked out of " how green was my valley" the book, not the movie...now he is a proper Toff or Tosh or whatever you all say Lording about with his ladyship about keeping things stable.

Its important to note that the poll shows pre-May 2015 members are heavily in favour of Smith 62-38 and hence the Labour party has been subject to what is effectively a hostile takeover by the new radicals. C

Yeh, £3 dog-on-a-string types shouting "Cuba!". All these nutters are now concentrated in the labour membership, enough to get Corbyn elected, but it's the other 99% of the electorate who aren't labour members he needs to convince (or at least 40% of them). That's not happening, the opinion polls clearly say so.

Going a bit further back in history there was quite a bit of exitism during the Blair years as traditional Labour supporters left the party. Maybe this "entryism" is them coming back? When Corbyn was elected a friend of mine who is much better informed about the party explained to me that it would take Corbyn and his supporters a pretty hard two years to get the party back to its roots. To my amazement Corbyn has not been unhorsed and maybe a lot of current Labour MP's are looking at deselection. Fair play to him.

Ultimately, Kezia Dugdale is a creature of the party, primed to act in what she considers the party's best interest (as a fundamentally conservative institution) over and above her own. That's why she took on the job of Scots leader at a time when a cannier and more self-interested person might have passed and that's why she's doing her best to stab Corbyn in the back now.

However, the other important fact about Kez is that she's unbelievably inept, so she'll now be stuck trying to make her relationship with Corbyn work.

Oh dear oh dear oh dear!! This brexit stuff isn't panning out is it? And with Sturgeon set to announce her 'Autumn of independence' and send thousands of her supporters onto the streets to pretend to be Jehovas Witnesses, those figures are only likely to worsen.

Stick with the union, mein dickie old chums. Why play for East Stirling when you can play for Manchester United?

those are leader of party ratings. you would have to be living on a different planet not to realise Davidson's party beating Dugdale's party into second place was the cause.

Dugdale and hard line Yoons like Hothersall have been playing right into tory hands every single step of the way. no reason at all to vote for SLAB if all you care about is 'SNPBAD' and 'staunch' Yoonionism.

tories will always be able to do that far more rabidly than even Dugdale, Smart, Baillie, Hothersall etc. can ever do.

hiring a Daily Heil journo won't help either. he'll just push even more SLAB voters into the tories arms since SLAB can never out-tory the tories on raving Yoon SNP hatred.

all this while Dugdale is just a joke and a punchline, to put it mildly.

Keaton, it was a "how well is x doing as their party leader" question, not a "How much to you like x" question. I oppose everything the Tories stand for but even I'd say Davidson is doing a good job as a Tory leader.

It's by a single point. As has been said it's objectively the case that replacing scottish labour as the opposition means Ruth is doing her job as party leader and the ratings reflect that.

The Kezia/scottish labour high command strategy of the UK Union at any cost combined with red tory policies [which is still pushing scottish labour voters to simply support the tory party instead] also means they are far more likely to rate Davidson highly themselves. As is seen in the breakdown.

UKGOV poll. Tory sockpuppet poll? All part of the Brit Nat demonise Sturgeon campaign. A cursory look at the figures seem to point to some glaring inconsistencies. I expect James will thoroughly trash that poll. Not least the timing of it.